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OF YOU MY HEART HAS SPOKEN

- God's Gracious Gift A Blog by Eamonn Monson SAC

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Showing posts from February, 2019

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THE MAN WHO ROBS YOU: Crucifix Taken and Retrieved

on February 24, 2019

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RAFORD: A Place of Grace

on February 21, 2019

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THE HOLY BATH: A Rite of Passage

on February 20, 2019

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A RIVER IN THE DRY SEASON: Remembering Shirley, Twenty Years On

on February 12, 2019

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Come Take My Hands

on February 11, 2019

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The Solitary Life of a Single Woman

on February 01, 2019

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RADIANT WITH GLADNESS: Easter Vigil Homily 2019

Last Sunday morning at the 10am Mass Deacon Duncan and I were standing at the altar, possibly during the Eucharistic Prayer, when we saw little Emily leading her mother up the side aisle until they came right in front of the altar. Emily is about a year and a half old and I think she is just learning to walk and her mum is behind her holding both of Emily’s hands so that it’s the child who is at the front, leading. What both Duncan and I saw was the extraordinary joy on the face of the child as she looked up. She was literally radiant with gladness at whatever she was seeing – and it was not Duncan or me. It was like she was having a vision of God. It was quite extraordinary.
So, she has become for me a symbol of the journey that we have all been making towards Easter and it is somehow the child, that which is innocent within us that has led us here to catch sight of the mystery of Jesus who died and has come back to life. No one but God knows what was going on in Emily’s mind, no one …

ON OUR KNEES - Mass of the Lord's Supper

Last weekend on Radio 4’s Sunday morning programme there was a report on a spiritual retreat held at the Pope’s residence in the Vatican. The retreat was suggested by Archbishop Justin Welby, head of the Anglican Communion, and was attended by political and religious leaders from South Sudan, a country that has been torn by a brutal civil war for the past seven years or so, taking the lives of 400,000 people. At the end of the retreat there was a meeting with Pope Francis who pleaded with them to keep the fragile peace which has recently been established. The two opposing leaders are Christian. Having finished his talk, Pope Francis stood up, everyone in the room stood with him and he went and knelt to kiss the feet of each of the leaders. Everyone in the room was stunned, shocked by what was taking place and it was said by Martin Bashir – the only journalist present – that everyone was in tears. Pope Francis was following the example of Jesus who “emptied Himself, taking the form of a…

From Notre Dame to Sacre Coeur: Easter 2019

It was Tuesday morning when I heard the news that Notre Dame de Paris had gone up in flames the evening before. Having seen it three years ago and, more importantly, having prayed there, I felt a pang of sadness. And then it struck me that there is something powerfully symbolic about the event and its timing, it being the start of Holy Week and perhaps it stands now as a prophetic statement of the spiritual state of Catholicism, not just in France but in Europe. As if Our Lady herself, Notre Dame, is reminding us how things really are.
Much of the reaction has been about the physicality and cultural importance rather than the spiritual and, it’s very interesting that politicians and the wealthy could so readily commit money to the restoration of this great building but do not show the same readiness to put money into the restoration of the lives of the poor. Still, the burning of this much-loved building has brought people’s attention to its sacredness and we have the witness of Fr Jea…

STOP ALL THE CLOCKS, COVER THE STATUES

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, silence the pianos"
The words of Funeral Blues by W H Auden remind me of when my grandfather died. Everything stopped - literally. Curtains were closed, the clock was stopped, the radio turned off, the television covered with a cloth and would not be watched until the funeral was over. For a child it was all a bit spooky and sombre but it was the way of acknowledging the major loss that had just occurred. Instead of entertainment there was conversation about the man who had died and prayers for his soul. His life and death became the total focus. Those days were all about him. A veil of sorrow and remembrance was thrown over everything. A veil of mourning, a mourning that included a lot of eating and drinking and even music.
I remember in Shankill visiting a man whose wife had just died. We all sat around the kitchen table and every time he started to talk about her he would start crying, they would all cry so in the end they dec…

Saying It Is Half The Victory

The first day of springtime breaks with heavy clouds as I set out along the A27 from Hastings to Crawley for a meeting of priests. I used to dislike this road intensely but I’ve become accustomed to it now and take it as it comes, take the traffic as it is, though this morning it’s not bad at all.
On the radio they’re talking about “The Terrible Sonnets” of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the 19th century English Jesuit priest and poet whom I became quite fond of when still at school. The Terrible Sonnets were written in Ireland, a place where he felt exiled and suffered from depression, a condition I have struggled with for many years, maybe even since I was a child. “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day” he wrote. I know this feeling well.
But I smile at the thought of exile, living away from one’s homeland which for Hopkins was like oppressive captivity whereas for me I feel free. This is what I think in the silence after the radio has been turned off.
Along the way I glance at the hedger…

FAREWELL TO AN UNSAFE PERMANENCE

We taste the bread
Of emergency
In the ruins of our past
Consuming the cup of haste
We bid farewell
To an unsafe permanence
That was

This is our Passover into
The liberty of uncertainty
Enslaved no more
Held bound only
In the slavery of Love's
Leading strings
A child's halter

Motherhood and God

St. Vincent Pallotti speaks about being “immersed in an immense sea of Divine Mercy.” One of the words the Bible uses to define Mercy is rechem which is a Mother’s womb, indicating that God’s instinct is like that of a Mother for the child in her womb, though God’s instinct is of course infinitely greater and all perfect.
Hesed also expresses the tender, faithful, loving mercy of God, which is described as the feeling a Mother has when she leans over her baby to feed him or her.
“Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the child of her womb? Even if these forget, yet I will not forget you.” (Isaiah 49:15) Pope St. John Paul II uses this phrase in a meditation on how Jesus experiences the Fatherhood of God. The Pope says that the Fatherhood of God is often expressed in terms of Motherhood in some of the prophecies of the Old Testament. “As one whom his Mother comforts, so will I comfort you.” (Isaiah 66:13) and our attitude in the presence of God is to…

SOUJOURNER & STRANGER: I Found Myself Again

Moses named his firstborn Gershom because, he said "I am a stranger in a foreign land." Another translation uses the word sojourner, which I prefer. It's what happens to us in Lent - we go deeper as sojourner into the foreign regions of our soul, that part of us that we do not normally inhabit because it is essentially solitary and silent. Sometimes it's more painful than we can bear. And there too we encounter fears that tell us lies to keep us as far away as possible from our true selves and from God. But as Jesus was led by and filled with the Holy Spirit, so are we. Our foreign experiences, our deserts are filled with the same Holy Spirit.
A song that has echoed in me since I was a child - "this world is not my home, I'm just a passin through" - expresses the reality that I have always to some extent experienced myself as a stranger sojourner, a reluctant inhabitant of this earth with a sense of unbelonging.
That is not to say that I am unhappy. …

FOG ON THE HORIZON

Symbolic of where I'm going,

Fog on the horizon
Cloaking the hills
Draping the trees

The serene fields of England
Fresh in vibrant green
White Hawthorne blossoms

Crowning - fifth mystery

Queen of the May
Help of Christians
Gazing

Down

The dead-slow stress of morning traffic

Mine a high speed pilgrim train
No less tranquil than the gentle pace of barges on the canal

Below

I take a different route
Kick the ball in another direction
Sail against the current

For the glory of You the One True God and Jesus Christ whom You have sent

The saving of the soul
The unheard voice
Of the unseen child,
Hard pressed mother,
Troubled father

Leaders who act as if they were God and reach to touch the Tree of Life

At the risk of Paradise

The entertaining gods
At whose feet the masses lay down their approving ckoaks

Jesus said, "In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: "'You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving."
(Ma…

The Solitary Life of a Single Woman

Mary, a neighbour at home died recently. She was about a year younger than me and lived three doors away, lived there most of our sixty-something lives. There are two brothers and a sister, married with their own families but Mary remained single and lived at home alone for many years since her parents died.
A solitary life, even an isolated one. No one in the avenue ever seemed to get close to her, there was no sign of friends coming to see her. We were not close, though we would always have a chat at her gate when I’d be home. The talk was mostly about her health because she had been fighting cancer for quite a few years and I would promise to pray for her. Her response to this promise of mine one day was, “you’re a liar, you’re a liar!” Maybe I wasn’t praying enough. Maybe she was telling the truth.
But I did think of her and pray when in my mind I would go around the sixteen terraced houses in the avenue and I would feel what I thought must be her loneliness, though maybe she wa…

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